"Over a year ago, Microsoft executives sent out feelers to Facebook to see if the company would be interested in acquiring Bing, though the overture was not officially sanctioned by Steven A. Ballmer, chief executive of Microsoft, one of these people said. Mr. Zuckerberg declined, saying Facebook had too much else to concentrate on. Dawn Beauparlant, a spokeswoman for Microsoft, declined to comment, as did Ashley Zandy, a spokeswoman for Facebook." Seems Facebook is smart.

If the execs in charge of Bing wanted to get rid of it, why they did so much effort to merge with Yahoo in a not so distant past?

It's called salesmanship. You never EVER let on how desperately you want to get rid of something. Even if you would be willing to pay for others to buy it off you, you act as though it is so valuable you'd trade your grandchild's life for it.